Harvey Glatman
"The reason I killed those girls was 'cause they asked me to. ...They did; all of them." "They asked you to." "Sure. They said they'd rather be dead than be with me." Harvey Murray Glatman, a.k.a. "The Lonely Hearts Killer" and "The Glamour Girl Slayer", was a serial killer and rapist active during the late 1950s. Background Born in the Bronx on December 10, 1927, Harvey's parents Albert and Ophelia had a distinct feeling that something wasn't right with their son, who exhibited strange emotional behavior. One day, while Harvey was three, Ophelia found him committing a crude form of sadomasochism. However, when taken to a family physician, she was told that it was a phase and Harvey will "grow out of it", leading to her and Albert to dismiss future occurrences. At age twelve, children made fun of Harvey because of his odd physicality, and he also developed a fear of girls. He also began committing several robberies at the private homes of women, taking anything he could find. Eventually, Harvey escalated, sexually assaulting the women residing in the homes he burglarized. Finally, Albert and Ophelia couldn't put a blind eye onto their son's sadomasochistic activities and sent him to a psychiatrist, all the while unaware of the string of robberies and sexual assaults he was committing. On May 18, 1945, Harvey broke into the apartment of one Elma Hamum, a length of rope and a .25-caliber pistol in his possession. He was caught in the act and arrested; he consequently confessed to his robberies but left out those involving the sexual assaults upon his victims. Harvey was charged with first-degree robbery and his parents posted bail. The following month, Harvey abducted Noreen Laurel and touched her before returning her home, but Laurel immediately notified the authorities and he was arrested again. This time, his parents were unable to post bail. During his incarceration, prison psychiatrists diagnosed Harvey as a schizophrenic (or, at the time, having a split-personality disorder) or having psychoneurosis. He was eventually released in late November. Crimes, Capture, and Execution During August of 1946, Harvey began a series of attacks. First, he attacked Thomas Staro and Doris Thorn, robbing Staro and molesting Thorn, keeping them both compliant with a cap gun that they believed was an actual firearm. Going to Albany, he attempted to sexually assault a nurse, Florence Hayden, but she escaped. Harvey then tried to attack Evelyn Berge and Beverly Goldsten, but they also escaped and alerted the police, who threw Harvey back into prison. Sentenced to five to ten years for assaulting Hayden, Harvey was diagnosed as a psychopath. Nevertheless, he proved to be a model prisoner with a high IQ and was paroled in 1951. It was during this time that Albert Glatman died from diabetes. Harvey then moved to Los Angeles and got a job as a TV repairman. He also posed as a photographer and convinced women to pose for him in "bondage situations". One day, on August 1957, Harvey snapped and called in Judith Dull, a 19-year-old divorcee who was desperate to pay money for a lawyer in a child custody battle with her ex-husband, telling her that he'll pay money if she poses for him. Dull agreed and hung up, but not before Harvey told her to "wear a tight skirt and sweater". Dull obliged, and when she arrived, he tied her up, telling her it was part of the shoot, and took photos of her. Harvey then pulled out a .32 Browning automatic, ordered her to strip down, took more photos of her, then raped her. Afterwards, he drove her past Thousand Palms, strangled her to death, and then took several more photos of her corpse before abandoning it in the desert. On March 1958, Harvey encountered Shirley Bridgeford at the Patty Sullivan Lonely Hearts Club, using the alias of George Williams. The two decided to eat together and Harvey drove her to Oceanside for dinner. He then drove her to Vallecito Mountains, where he aimed his .32 at her heart, ordered her to undress, and raped and took photos of her. Shortly afterwards, Harvey murdered her and repeated what he did to Judith Dull post-mortem: take pictures of the body before leaving. Four months later, he claimed his third victim, Ruth Mercado, using the alias of Frank Wilson as means of covering his tracks, repeating the ritual he initiated with Dull and Bridgeford. He was finally caught on July, a month after his murder of Mercado. During that time, he became a photographer for the Diane Studio, a modeling agency. He intended to kill the agency's owner, who herself was a model who posed for some of the shoots, but the woman was disturbed by Harvey upon meeting him and instead signed him up to take photos of another of the agency's models, Lorraine Vigil, who was new. Harvey decided to take the job and abducted Lorraine. However, she fought back and escaped, eventually running into two policemen that arrested Harvey. Police detectives interrogated Harvey, and he eventually caved in, confessing to killing his victims and telling them about "the toolbox", a container that held the photos he took of Dull, Bridgeford, and Mercado before, during, and after their murders. Authorities found the toolbox at Harvey's apartment with the intention of using the photos as evidence against him during court. Harvey's victims' bodies were also discovered. During his trial, Ophelia, now 69 years old, apologized for her son's actions and described him as "sick". Harvey's lawyer, Willard Whittinghill, decided to present his client as being mentally ill. However, the psychiatric examination concluded that Harvey wasn't suffering from psychosis and that he was fully responsible for his actions. Harvey was tried for the murders of Mercado and Bridgeford, the testimonies provided from Bridgeford's family proving to be most effective in the trial. Harvey was shortly found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and he was given the the death penalty. Harvey was transferred to the San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, California, coincidentally the same prison that would house Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez. He was scheduled to be executed in the prison's "green room", a gas chamber using lethal cyanide, at 10 a.m. The procedure began at September 18, 1959, and it took 12 minutes for Harvey to succumb to the cyanide's toxicity. Modus Operandi Harvey targeted beautiful women, whom he would lure in by pretending to be a photographer promising to take photos of them. One of his ruses was that he was taking pictures for pulp fiction magazines, which gave him an excuse to tie them up. After taking a few pictures of them, he would hold them at gunpoint with a .32 Browning automatic, order them to undress, and then continue taking pictures. Harvey would then rape them and then take them out into the desert afterwards, killing them by strangling them to death with a rope. When his victims were dead, Harvey would find closure by taking more photos of the corpses before leaving. Known Victims *New York City, New York: **1939-1944: Sexually assaulted and/or robbed numerous unnamed women **1945: ***May 18: Elma Hamum ***June 18: Noreen Laurel *The August 1946 assault spree in New York: **New York City: Thomas Staro and Doris Thorn **Albany: ***Florence Hayden ***Evelyn Berge and Beverly Goldsten *Unspecified date in 1954, Boulder, Colorado: Dorothy Gay Howard, 18 *Los Angeles, California: **August 1957: Judith Ann Dull, 19 **1958: ***March: Shirley Ann Bridgeford, 24 ***June: Ruth Rita Mercado, 24 ***July: ****Diane ****Lorraine Vigil Notes *Harvey isn't the only killer to possess the nickname of The Lonely Hearts Killer. Serial killer Harry Powers, "black widow"-type serial killer Nannie Doss, and killer couple Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck also hold the same nickname. On Criminal Minds While Harvey hasn't been referenced in Criminal Minds so far, Eric Olson's habit of framing photos of several of his murder sites and hanging them on his walls may have been based on what he did to the pictures he took of his victims. Sources *Wikipedia's article about Harvey *TruTV's articles about Harvey *SK Central's article about Harvey *Summary about Harvey's life by Radford University's Department of Psychology Category:Real People Category:Real Life Killers Category:Real Serial Killers Category:Real Life Rapists Category:Real Lonely Hearts Killers